The integration of gestures and pictures into pedagogy has demonstrated potential for improving adults’ learning of foreign language (L2) vocabulary. However, the relative benefits of gestures and pictures on children’s L2 vocabulary learning have not been formally evaluated. In three experiments, we investigated the effects of gesture-based and picture-based learning on 8-year-old primary school children’s acquisition of novel L2 vocabulary. In each experiment, German children were trained over 5 consecutive days on auditorily presented, concrete and abstract, English vocabulary. In Experiments 1 and 2, gesture enrichment (auditorily presented L2 words accompanied with self-performed gestures) was compared with a non-enriched baseline condition. In Experiment 3, gesture enrichment was compared with picture enrichment (auditorily presented words accompanied with pictures). Children performed vocabulary recall and translation tests at 3 days, 2 months, and 6 months post-learning. Both gesture and picture enrichment enhanced children’s test performance compared with non-enriched learning. Benefits of gesture and picture enrichment persisted up to 6 months after training and occurred for both concrete and abstract words. Gesture-enriched learning was hypothesized to boost learning outcomes more than picture-enriched learning on the basis of previous findings in adults. Unexpectedly, however, we observed similar benefits of gesture and picture enrichment on children’s L2 learning. These findings suggest that both gestures and pictures enhance children’s L2 learning and that performance benefits are robust over long timescales.
Sounds that have been produced with one's own motor system tend to be remembered better than sounds that have only been perceived, suggesting a role of motor information in memory for auditory stimuli. To address potential contributions of the motor network to the recognition of previously produced sounds, we used event-related potential, electric current density, and behavioral measures to investigate memory for produced and perceived melodies. Musicians performed or listened to novel melodies, and then heard the melodies either in their original version or with single pitch alterations. Production learning enhanced subsequent recognition accuracy and increased amplitudes of N200, P300, and N400 responses to pitch alterations. Premotor and supplementary motor regions showed greater current density during the initial detection of alterations in previously produced melodies than in previously perceived melodies, associated with the N200. Primary motor cortex was more strongly engaged by alterations in previously produced melodies within the P300 and N400 timeframes. Motor memory traces may therefore interface with auditory pitch percepts in premotor regions as early as 200 ms following perceived pitch onsets. Outcomes suggest that auditory-motor interactions contribute to memory benefits conferred by production experience, and support a role of motor prediction mechanisms in the production effect.
Neural responses demonstrate evidence of resonance, or oscillation, during the production of periodic auditory events. Music contains periodic auditory events that give rise to a sense of beat, which in turn generates a sense of meter on the basis of multiple periodicities. Metrical hierarchies may aid memory for music by facilitating similarity-based associations among sequence events at different periodic distances that unfold in longer contexts. A fundamental question is how metrical associations arising from a musical context influence memory during music performance. Longer contexts may facilitate metrical associations at higher hierarchical levels more than shorter contexts, a prediction of the range model, a formal model of planning processes in music performance (Palmer and Pfordresher, 2003; Pfordresher et al., 2007). Serial ordering errors, in which intended sequence events are produced in incorrect sequence positions, were measured as skilled pianists performed musical pieces that contained excerpts embedded in long or short musical contexts. Pitch errors arose from metrically similar positions and further sequential distances more often when the excerpt was embedded in long contexts compared to short contexts. Musicians’ keystroke intensities and error rates also revealed influences of metrical hierarchies, which differed for performances in long and short contexts. The range model accounted for contextual effects and provided better fits to empirical findings when metrical associations between sequence events were included. Longer sequence contexts may facilitate planning during sequence production by increasing conceptual similarity between hierarchically associated events. These findings are consistent with the notion that neural oscillations at multiple periodicities may strengthen metrical associations across sequence events during planning.
The current study investigated the relationship between planning processes and feedback monitoring during music performance, a complex task in which performers prepare upcoming events while monitoring their sensory outcomes. Theories of action planning in auditory-motor production tasks propose that the planning of future events co-occurs with the perception of auditory feedback. This study investigated the neural correlates of planning and feedback monitoring by manipulating the contents of auditory feedback during music performance. Pianists memorized and performed melodies at a cued tempo in a synchronization-continuation task while the EEG was recorded. During performance, auditory feedback associated with single melody tones was occasionally substituted with tones corresponding to future (next), present (current), or past (previous) melody tones. Only future-oriented altered feedback disrupted behavior: Future-oriented feedback caused pianists to slow down on the subsequent tone more than past-oriented feedback, and amplitudes of the auditory N1 potential elicited by the tone immediately following the altered feedback were larger for future-oriented than for past-oriented or noncontextual (unrelated) altered feedback; larger N1 amplitudes were associated with greater slowing following altered feedback in the future condition only. Feedback-related negativities were elicited in all altered feedback conditions. In sum, behavioral and neural evidence suggests that future-oriented feedback disrupts performance more than past-oriented feedback, consistent with planning theories that posit similarity-based interference between feedback and planning contents. Neural sensory processing of auditory feedback, reflected in the N1 ERP, may serve as a marker for temporal disruption caused by altered auditory feedback in auditory-motor production tasks.
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